At Ohio University, you’ll find the mecca of the creative, innovative and sometimes downright weird. With this eccentricity come some very strange living situations. From the messy to the flat-out insane, there are 10 annoying people you could find yourself a little too close to when walking into your OU dorm.
10. Janice
My own neighbor from freshman year fell under the annoying category. Everything about her was loud: her voice, her music, her never-ending phone calls, her litany of sexual encounters and even the way she closed the drawers lining our shared wall. One time, I woke up to the sound of a cat meowing and discovered that she and her roommate had been keeping a stray in a closet. I started calling her Janice because, like the character from Friends, she would scream, “OH MY GOD” all the time. I would say she was the most unpleasant person I’ve ever met, but I never actually spoken to her in person. I started using the hashtag #ThinWallThickSkull to tweet about some of Janice’s more quotable moments, and she got pretty popular on Twitter.
9. The gamer
Ideally, a lot of college students would rather spend their time playing video games than going to class. But would you believe that there are some people out there who actually decide to pursue this option? “I had a roommate who cared more about his videogame score than his GPA,” graduate Barrett Lawlis said. “So much more, he went ahead and bought me an Xbox Live account, then missed a final playing games.” This type of person might not be the most irritating person in a dorm, but it can definitely become aggravating to see your roommate having fun all day while you slave over hours of homework.
8. The pack rat roommate
When adjusting to dorm life, roommates may find themselves at odds with one another over just how much they should share. But some might take this to another level.
“My freshman year, one of my roommates started stealing from me and my other roommates,” sophomore Anna Pasternak said. “We found hella stuff — clothes, jewelry, even our bras and underwear — that we thought we had just misplaced hidden under her bed, in her closet, etc. It was awful and made us all so paranoid for the rest of the year.”
7. The Parrothead
You might not always like your neighbors’ music, but when they have very specific, repetitive taste, there’s only so much cheap earplugs can do. “The guy in the room next to mine was a Jimmy Buffett freak. That’s all he would ever play on his stereo, period,” graduate Jim Willis said. “He mounted the speakers in the wooden cabinet that was common between the rooms, so I could hear every note.” In some cases, a visit next door might solve this type of problem quickly and easily. Other neighbors, however, will insist that their music must be shared with the entire campus.
6. The bipolar destroyer
A small mess can make a tiny dorm room seem cluttered and disgusting. During his freshman year, graduate Ben Curry’s roommate was manic-depressive. “He trashed the room and when I walked in he was calmly playing his guitar,” Curry said. “When I asked him what happened, he had no clue.” Luckily, most roommates remember how they made messes, which makes it much easier to justifiably get mad at them.
5. The bloody drug dealer
Most of the people on this list are irritating because of their habits, but what about the roommates whose unpredictability makes them so hard to live with?
“My freshman year I ended up with a roommate who was dating a guy who sold weed,” junior Bethany Gratz said. “There was one night she and her boyfriend came in at about 1 a.m. on a Friday while I had company and had me bandage up his hand, which was bloody and possibly a little fractured because he had punched a wall in The Crystal. Then they went back out.” Unfortunately, those little profiles people write about themselves when choosing roommates rarely include a person’s potential to be a criminal.
4. The class-skipping upperclassman
Even the most agreeable of us find it tough to share a room, but what if you have to live with someone who doesn’t want a roommate at all? As a freshman, graduate Elissa Ell shared a room with an upperclassman who constantly skipped class. “Apparently her not-so-secret plan was to annoy whoever her roommate was to the point that the person moved out so she’d have a double to herself,” Ell said. Ell’s roommate actually ended up leaving — which she did in the middle of the night. “At least she was kind enough to leave in the fridge an entire block of cheese that she had literally taken a giant bite out of,” Ell said. At least you might get some free cheese out of the experience.
3. The messy mod mate
Dorm bathrooms are usually shared by those who may not see eye to eye when it comes to standards of cleanliness. Even though we do call it Dirty South, other people living in Aislyn Scalese’s mod last year took the name literally. Scalese, now a sophomore, had an especially confusing experience with an exchange student from Saudi Arabia who would attach posters to his wall with pieces of chewed food. He also once left the bathroom covered in something brown. “I’m not sure if he just didn’t understand the concept of the bathroom,” Scalese said. “It smelled awful.” Luckily, the mysterious substance turned out to be tea. When living in a mod, you should establish early on what should and should not go on in your shared bathroom.
2. The food ruiner
Let’s face it: OU has a party going on 24/7, and that can lead to people doing some pretty messed up things. Sophomore Nathan McNamara dealt with someone who didn’t seem to understand the bathroom concept, either. “During the first month of my freshman year, my roommate came home drunk on a Sunday afternoon, opened our fridge and then proceeded to pee in it all over our food,” McNamara said. “I asked him, ‘what the hell are you doing?’ and he simply responded, ‘I’m pissing.’” Like McNamara, you may eventually find yourself dealing with a drunk roommate. Hopefully your food isn’t a casualty of fest season this spring.
1. The psycho suitemate
Most of the people on this list create easily solvable problems, but every now and then, you might run into someone who takes the cake for going totally insane. “I left her a note in the bathroom asking her to buy more toilet paper, and a few days later she shoved a roll into the toilet, literally jammed down in the bowl. It had a note on it that said ‘here you go,’” sophomore Destiny Campbell said. And Campbell’s suitemate did more than just passive-aggressively clog their shared toilet. “Apparently when she was having her room checked by our RA, she had four snakes under her bed,” Campbell said. These types of people may not be very pleasant to live with, but at least they can provide you with some entertaining stories to remember even when your dorm days are long behind you.
